Where Will All the Water Go?

This photo shows a huge crack in Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier. The glacier is thinning and weakening. A big chunk of the glacier is on its way to becoming a new iceberg that will eventually melt in the ocean.

Why It Matters

Glaciers all over Earth are melting. The polar ice caps are melting as well. In fact, they are melting at the alarming rate of 9 percent per decade. Since the 1960s, the thickness of Arctic ice has decreased by 40 percent.

Why is all this melting going on? Ice all over Earth is gaining thermal energy and changing from the solid to liquid state. The increased thermal energy is due to global warming.

Where will all that liquid water go? It will go into the ocean and raise sea levels. You can use the interactive map at the following URL to see how sea levels are changing around the world: http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/. Click on some of the arrows on the map and then on the linear trend. On each graph, look for the linear mean sea level trend.

Credit: Nattu

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nattu/3179444802/

License: CC BY-NC 3.0

The islands of the Maldives in the Indian ocean are slowly being eroded by the rising seas
[Figure2]

What Do You Think?

Learn more about melting ice and rising sea levels at the links below. Then answer the questions that follow.